Country Music Hall of Fame restaurant isn't just for tourists

Sample sophisticated country cooking with slice of country music history

Apr. 11, 2012

Two Twenty-Two Grill at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum serves classic country cooking with a twist, such as the super-sized chicken biscuit draped in Cheddar and topped with an omelet. / JAE S. LEE / THE TENNESSEAN

Written by

Jennifer Justus col sig

If you go

Two Twenty-Two Grill Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum 222 Fifth Ave. S., Nashville, 615-416-2001 Where to sit: Sit near the music. Piano player Steve Willets is entertaining to watch, and he keeps the volume at a level that makes it easy to talk and think. What to drink: At brunch, we ordered mimosas, and just like the chicken biscuit, they come big. But the 12-ounce glass of champagne and orange juice cost only $7, a good bang for your buck. What to order: Of the dishes we tasted, I liked the jalapeño fritters most. Manager Garrett recommends the Eggs Benedict, as he loves chef Jeremy Foy’s hollandaise sauce. If you’re feeling up to it, go for the chicken biscuit. The next time I visit, I plan to try the sweet potato hash with grilled potatoes, tasso ham, red peppers, onions, smoked Gouda and an egg on top.

101 Minutes: About the SeriesIt’s been said that a proper chef’s hat has 101 folds representing the number of ways you can cook an egg. So we’re choosing a local restaurant to visit each month — just for 101 minutes.

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A few Sundays ago, I was a tourist in my own town.

It’s an easy thing to do here. One minute you’re pecking at a computer keyboard under fluorescent lights, the next you’re under the neon moons of a honky-tonk, clutching a PBR and chatting with a couple from England. And even though it can get tiresome at times (all those clomping cowboy boots!), I say we’re lucky to live in a place that 11 million people descend upon each year. A place with a past. A city with soul.

But on this particular Sunday, I had work to do, and I wanted to be a tourist for only 101 Minutes. So we headed out for brunch at Two Twenty-Two Grill, the restaurant inside the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

Living downtown, I thought I had sampled the options — from Hooters to The Palm and Demos’ to Ichiban. Plus, I had visited the museum (and loved it), but I’d never considered trying the restaurant.

So just as we walked across Broadway where a John Mellencamp cover drifted out the open windows of Honky Tonk Central, I tried to let a feeling of newness come over me — to see the city with fresh eyes. When traveling I seem to notice more about my surroundings, and I hoped to turn it on at home, too. Though I’d zipped through Music City Walk of Fame Park before, for instance, I’d never paused to look at the stars in the sidewalk for Roy Orbison and Jimi Hendrix.

Nap-inducing indulgences

Once inside the Hall of Fame, we learned that guests at Two Twenty-Two Grill sit inside the soaring glass atrium. Shadows from steel beams stripe the room in a space otherwise flooded with sunlight.

Steve Willets, a talented piano player, sat at one end of the space, and with not a single sheet of music, his fingers flitted and sailed across the keys. His eyes followed the visitors in the room, and I imagined his mind even drifting to his grocery list as he made Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” look so easy and sound so smooth.

The tables at Two Twenty-Two partly jut into the main foyer, where visitors file past toward the museum entrance, which makes it feel a bit like an airport. That’s not a bad thing. It’s people-watching at its finest.

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Once settled at our linen-covered spot topped with vase of purple flowers, we noticed young couples who looked to be on vacation, a family of six, and a couple of mustached men in flannel who could have been hipsters (or not). We even spotted a woman who lives in our building. A local! But it shouldn’t have surprised us, apparently. Restaurant manager Garrett Perkins told me later that about 40 percent of the restaurant’s business comes from the Nashville area.

Our server, a man named Steve with a giant belt buckle and boots, all but greeted us with a howdy. He was friendly — truly friendly and quick with waters for the table — and it made me happy to think that he’s on the front porch of our city.

And it turns out that, just like the buckle, lots of things come big at this restaurant. Our mimosas arrived not in dainty flutes but in sturdy 12-ounce glasses. And while my dining companion, Tony, ordered a plate of corn cakes piled with barbecue pork along with slaw and bowl of roasted vegetables, I ordered the chicken biscuit, fried okra and jalapeno fritters. The biscuit alone weighed almost a pound. Really.

“That has an omelet on it,” Tony pointed out.

But the biscuit was golden-crisp on the outside, moist inside and topped with well-seasoned fried chicken breast blanketed in cheddar. I really didn’t need the egg, but it did make it more brunchlike. A ladle of white gravy flecked with darker bits scraped up from the pan drizzled down from the top. Yes, it was good. And yes, it was bad.

Perkins understands this about the over-the-top creation and admits he likes his brunch to be an indulgence. The same size biscuit used in another dish is scooped out and filled with sausage gravy and egg to make The Biscuit Bowl.

“My favorite thing about Sunday brunch is the nap I take after Sunday brunch, and both of those are nap-inducing,” he told me later.

Southern with twists

Although the menu is chef Jeremy Foy’s creation, Perkins said the two discuss ideas, as both hail from North Carolina and wanted a Southern menu with a few twists.

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“We tried to maybe throw some curveballs,” he said.

Indeed, you’ll find Southern Egg Rolls on the lunch menu stuffed with pulled pork. But the biscuit came along for selfish reasons.

I admit that I also ordered irresponsibly because I chose way too much starch. I don’t regret it.

The okra had a crispy cornmeal shell that protected the moisture of the vegetable. As for the jalapeno fritters, they had the crunchy exterior of hush puppies. But once the fork broke through the crust, it sailed into creamy mashed potato and bumped against a ring of jalapeño hidden like gem inside. The sauce on the fritters mostly brings together bits of smoky bacon with a sweet-mustard glaze.

Though the food was indulgent, the prices were not.

“Are you ready to spend $100?” Tony asked when we sat down. But it was far from that much on the final bill, even with an 18 percent gratuity added. And we would have given Steve at least that much.

“I think they expect the food to be expensive and the quality to be low,” Perkins said of his visitors. He likes surprising them.

Just before we boxed up our leftovers (and there were lots), Willets had moved on to playing “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.” An amazing musician in the room is easy to take for granted in this town. But on this day, we listened as tourists continued to file by on their way to learn about the music of Hank Williams or Chet Atkins or take in the new exhibit on the Bakersfield Sound.

Maybe it was the sunshine or the comfort food. Maybe it was the Zen-like rush of water from a nearby fountain, the mild distraction of people milling about, or the mimosa. Maybe it was the music.

But the mix of it all had me relaxed. And it had Tony dreaming up an idea for a song title or lyric about missing someone.

“I’m gonna write that,” he said.

And whether you live in this town or just stop by for a visit, could anything be more Nashville than that?